


Tableau de l'amour conjugal

by shirogiku



Series: Root Causes & Shaky Foundations [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: 18th Century Nerdery, All The Love For Miranda, Classical References, Cute Marrieds, Everyone Needs A Thomas, F/M, Humour, Mentions of Period-Typical Non-Con (discussed/non-explicit), Mentions of Period-Typical Sexism (discussed), No Actual Sex Because Two Nerds, Or lack of thereof, Period-Typical Attitudes (discussed), Pre-Series, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7804822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas and Miranda's first wedding night is spent in a literal closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tableau de l'amour conjugal

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Venette). And [this Roman talisman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus) will be relevant. In case this seems in any way high-brow :D

                                                                                   “ _Wedding puts an end to wooing…_ ”

                                                                                   — The Ladies Dictionary, Being a General Entertainment for the Fair Sex (London, 1694)

 

Of all the obligatory transitions in a person’s life, marriage must surely be the trickiest. If you are lucky, you begin as a hopeful, impudent suitor, the protagonist of a thrilling plot - but then comes the next act and you suddenly become a spouse. You must put away the poetry of courtship and think and act like one, which is to say, like an entirely sober foreign ambassador raised by, say, a community of penny-pinching Puritan merchants. And then get drunk and complain about your wife at the end of every dinner, of course.

 

The first wedding night, then, is something of an Italian opera based on a wildly misinterpreted Shakespearean tragedy. With Youth and Maturity as its leading actors. And the higher the newly wedded couple’s social station, the less privacy they are allowed.

 

So while there were no feudal seigneurs, courtiers or other obtrusive spectators in the room with them, Thomas was… nervous. He couldn’t help feeling as if they were very much _not_ alone, and if he thought that they could get away with it, he wouldn’t hesitate to give his nosy and shadowy ancestors a slip.

 

“Is everything alright?” Miranda asked, smiling at him softly, her beautiful brown hair tumbling down her near-translucent white shift.

 

“Yes, my dear,” he replied as she touched his shoulder. “I was merely mourning our flower crowns.”

 

She considered it. “These flower crowns?” As if by magic, they turned up in a basket, neatly wrapped up and wholly intact.

 

He threw his arms around her, twirling her around and crying joyously: “You’ve rescued them!”

 

They had been the work of a pleasant afternoon - spent in a _serious_ competition. For all that Thomas had grown up here, Miranda completely outdid him and his oversized blossoms with her elegant sprays of colour and green sprigs. Both, however, were united in being deemed too pagan for a respectable house.

 

“Of course I’ve rescued them.” She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I can’t have you looking so forlorn on such a happy occasion, can I?”

 

“You could have given me a _hint_.”

 

“I did, and you missed them all.”

 

His mind must have been elsewhere. “I have been trying to be creative, but my head is full of English kings, French nobility and treacherous Jasons. Oh, and those conjugal manuals.”

 

She slapped his arm lightly. “Banish the thought immediately!”

 

She tugged on his shirt so that he would bend down and let her put the crown that she had made for him back to where it belonged. Perhaps it _would_ ward off all unwelcome thought.

 

“There is one matter,” he said, catching their reflections in the looking glass above her dressing table. “Which I should like to resolve before we, er, proceed.”

 

“I expect so,” was her wry reply as she got to the bottom of the basket.

 

They hadn’t really _talked_ about it. Thomas had just told Miranda that she was his kindred spirit and the most wonderful soul that he had ever met - alright, there had been a _lot_ more babbling before and after that - and that all her past experiences were part of who she was without any single one defining her to a greater extent than what she had chosen for herself. Her inexplicable awe at his words swiftly translated into her mouth on his mouth and then her hands under his shirt, and well, that was how hard they had tried to wait for the ‘right’ and ‘proper’ moment and place.

 

As the awkward pause stretched on, they turned back to each other, both of them armed with Venette’s dried lamb’s blood.

 

Miranda stared at Thomas. “Why would you...”

 

“Well, I _have_ read the manual, so I spoke to a female butcher in the village. A widow. You would like her. Completely circumventing our servants, of course. I wore a disguise!”

 

“You wore a disguise,” Miranda repeated, trying to imagine that. “Oh Thomas.” She frowned. “There _are_ no listening holes in the room, are there?”

 

“Er.” There were. “But I do believe I have found them all.” And either way, in what world would anyone go _that_ far?

 

They planted the evidence. It was rather entertaining, especially since he couldn’t quite decide how much was too much, and Miranda had to stop him before the servants thought that he had stabbed her instead. With a pen knife.

 

“Or you me, with the scissors,” he parried. “For quoting too much poetry.”

 

“Thomas.” She looked deep into his eyes. “There is no such thing as _too_ much poetry in our bed.” She touched her finger to his nose. “You remember that.”

 

“Should we-”

 

“-make some noise just in case?”

 

“Are you…?”

 

“... completely the wrong mood…”

 

“I could still-”

 

Having done the deed, they decamped and moved the party… into the closet.

 

“Ah,” Thomas said. “Brings back memories.” It was not _the_ inner sanctum of his boyhood, but it had the same dimensions and the same family motto painted on the wall where you couldn’t possibly miss it.

 

“I should like to see the previous one,” Miranda decided. “Especially your alternative mottos.”

 

He grinned. “How well you know me, o wife of mine.”

 

“Careful with the wine!” Miranda was _not_ spending a night in the closet without that bottle. “I see you have been decorating, o husband of mine.”

 

Just a bit of paintwork, nothing too drastic. And nothing that she wouldn’t wish to repaint, hopefully.

 

Being the responsible candle-bearer, she passed by the Oriental nest of pillows and blankets and stopped in front of the treasure cupboards. “Which one is for lewd books and which one is for forbidden Bibles?”

 

He cocked his eyebrow. If he told her, where would be the fun in that? “I have not the faintest idea of what you are talking about, dearest. This is a room for prayer and meditation.”

 

“And Roman art?”

 

“And Roman art,” he agreed, finally remembering to uncork their strong red Gascon.

 

She found herself a pillow and cradled the bone-carved _fascinus_ on her lap. “I am warding off the evil eye.”

 

“I can see that.”

 

Trust it to Miranda to zero in on that sort of drawer at the first try. “Glasses?”

 

She seemed scandalised. “What are we, utter barbarians?”

 

He filled the glasses and placed the bottle in the wine cooler in the corner. “To new beginnings?”

 

Miranda smiled, raising her own glass. “To closets, old and new.”

 

“We won’t always have to hide, though,” he told her, their shoulders touching. “We won’t have to hide in Paris.”

 

Deep down, he had a nagging suspicion that it was the promise of Paris and its salons that had closed the deal for her.

 

Idly, she walked her fingers up and down the lucky charm. “The question is, what do we do with all your treasures?”

 

He thought about it. “Install a sturdier door?”

 

“Oh Thomas.” She drank more wine and reached for a sweetmeat.

 

There was something about a closet. It was small and it was intimate, which was always conducive to radical ideas. Also, it was perfect for a Moroccan lantern.

 

He slid down, placing his head on Miranda’s lap. “I have never understood it, though. _Why_ are pain and blood such necessary prerequisites for everything? You’d think the conjugal bed were a battlefield, or at least, a school for seamstresses.”

 

“Actually, is it, according to Aristotle. Or would you like to learn how to darn a sock?”

 

“Miranda!” There were fantastic flickers of light and shadow on the wall and a Priapic symbol poking him in the cheek. “Let’s not go that far.”

 

“Mmm, Lord Thomas of Closetshire, afraid of a little needle.”

 

“Not to mention,” he pressed on, “why must a woman’s honour rest _entirely_ on her sexual reputation?”

 

The choir to which he was preaching said, “Believe me, I have asked myself that question more times than I can count, as a young girl. Becoming a woman, I suppose, is accepting that such questions are futile.”

 

He sat up. “For as long as we are husband and wife, they shall _never_ be futile. You have my word on that.”

 

Miranda’s gaze softened, as it always did whenever he made such proclamations. She reached out and he leaned in, their fingers brushing, and they drank from each other’s glass with their arms intertwined.

 

“Why does Jason abandon Medea?” she wondered.

 

Jason and Medea had been happy for ten years - until his pursuit of another princess in Corinth.

 

“Some would say it is because she is Circe’s niece and a witch. But I say the ancient people had something against happy endings.” Miranda laughed. “Even if there was no real basis for a tragedy, they had to invent it.”

 

“Or perhaps Jason wasn’t a very good man, after all.”

 

“Heroes rarely are. Especially Greek ones.”

 

Miranda looked at Thomas. “A man can be strong and courageous, honest and well-respected, but the moment his wife is deemed unchaste, he loses his entire reputation. Do you understand that?”

 

He was not Miranda’s keeper, no matter what anyone else had to say. He read the Fall as a story of companionship and the price of knowledge, not a cautionary tale about a woman. “I understand that we are both growing maudlin again.”

 

So he kissed his Medea’s bare knee and asked her toes what they had to say on the subject of their mistress’s virtue.

 

“You are so silly,” said she, who routinely poked people with phallic objects.

 

He spoke of the foreign countries that they would soon visit. France, Italy, Spain, Greece or perhaps even Levant. In his mind’s eye, the world was an open map and nowhere was too far or too strange.

 

“You and your maps!”

 

“See if you can find my hookah.”

 

She laughed. “Because we aren’t in an exotic palace yet.” She let her hands wander, her nails dragging against his ribs and her breath hot on his neck. “Witches have no virtue, my love, only vice - plentiful and varied.”

 

He was happy to be bewitched, but the hold that this house had over him wasn’t so easily shaken off. How many times had he hidden from his father in a little room such as this one? And how many times had he got himself locked in by accident?

 

“What is it?” Miranda asked. She cupped his cheeks in alarm. “What’s got into you?”

 

No Europe, no travels, no dreams. He was six or seven again, and… He clutched Miranda’s wrist. “I truly don’t feel at ease here.”

 

Her frown only deepened. “Tell me.” He shook his head. “ _Tell_ me, Thomas.”

 

“Only if _you_ promise to tell me in return who broke your heart.”

 

She refilled their glasses. “Trust you to sniff that out.”

 

He pressed his forehead against her shoulder. “I was lonely, as a child. So I spent a lot of time talking to servants - they were my first friends in the world. But Jenny, she was more of an older sister I never had.” He wished he could do the story justice, but his early memories were very much a jumble. “One day, we were playing hide and seek, and I got it into my head to hide in Father’s study. God knows what had possessed me.” Miranda drew him closer still, listening without interruption. “So she came into the room after me and… he did too. Well. Suffice to say, the game was thoroughly interrupted. I kept quiet, though, in my hiding place.” Miranda made a noise. “She had to go away, after that, and I could never find her again.”

 

Miranda’s arms around him tightened. He could feel that she was angry, angrier than he had ever seen her. He was the one who was supposed to protect her - that duty he would do gladly. And yet, she wanted to be the champion, with cool hands and blazing eyes.

 

“He was a military man,” she said at length. “Black hair, glorious blue eyes, always so damn elegant and straight-backed. There is something about a uniform, you know? I was a girl, and like all girls, thought myself awfully clever.”

 

“Does he have a name?” Thomas prompted.

 

“Not really, no.”

 

Thomas brushed her hair back from her face. “‘General Wrong Prick‘ it is, then.” She swatted his hand away, laughing. “From the seamstress school, of course.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“ _Would_ you like to see my forbidden Bibles?”

 

Miranda regarded him speculatively. “You, sir, are a master of the art of wooing.”

**Author's Note:**

> The maid thing... isn't really spelt out, but it's exactly as nasty as you imagine it.
> 
> Comments are <3


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